Always and Forever Love

by Lynn Crandall ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BLURB:

The presence of a ghost in her life doesn't alarm Lacey Aegar, in fact it makes her happy. Two and a half years ago when her dead husband Nicholas reappeared in her life as a full-bodied spirit, she questioned her sanity. But with Nicholas' explanation that there are things about life that are not as she's always believed, she settled into a pleasant routine of working with her sister at their private investigation business and enjoying home life with her now 10-year-old son – with Nicholas never very far away.

Lacey's complacency and sense of stability is sent topsy-turvy when she runs into Jackson Carter, the son of powerful and influential business tycoon, William Carter. Typical of the Carter reputation, Jackson's slick new private investigating business is siphoning off clients from the Aegar sisters' business, creating financial difficulty. It's a recurring nightmare for Lacey, who has already seen damage done by the Carter family, and when she encounters Jackson, she wants nothing to do with him.

But things are not what they seem when it comes to Jackson Carter, either. Unbeknownst to Lacey and her sister, Jackson is fighting a battle to preserve his business, too, and his integrity. For him, it's a fight for his soul, and he enlists Lacey's help because of her unique investigative skills and open heart. When she uncovers a mole in his business, she also discovers that one of his clients' drug trials has been given the green light to go to the next phase based on falsified data. As they work together to save both their businesses, Jackson and Lacey not only face death, they come to grips with their feelings about love and life. With Nicholas's help, Lacey comes to understand that love is always and forever, but in choosing Jackson, she chooses a full life, a life worth living.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lacey Aegar's husband was killed, but he had stayed around as a ghost to comfort her. She and her sister run a private investigating agency when a new bigger agency comes into town. This agency is run by the son of a man who has left a scorched earth in his wake so Lacy already doesn't like the son.

This romance was sweet and short and I really enjoyed it. I call it a palate cleanser. When you are eating a multi-course dinner, sometimes you are served something like champagne sorbet to get your taste buds ready for the next course. It clears your palate of the taste of the last course. As in the champagne sorbet, it is useful and flavorful at the same time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT

Noting that the receptionist’s desk was empty, Lacey glanced at the wall clock and casually wondered why Michelle wasn’t at her desk by 10:30 a.m. But the thought was quickly forgotten when sounds of anguish spilled out from behind the door of the private office she shared with Sterling.

“I can’t believe it!” Sterling fumed.

“Can’t believe what?” Lacey walked to her desk and tossed her purse in a nearby chair, slightly alarmed by her sister’s dismay.

“Oh, when it rains it pours, I guess.” Sterling’s sleek, chestnut hair fell over her face as she leaned her head on her hands.

“If it weren’t for bad luck we’d have no luck at all?”

“We’re between a rock and a hard place,” Sterling came back with from under her hair.

“Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It was a common game for the sisters, something to test their edge and sometimes to relieve stress. But Lacey knew this time something was serious. “Wanna tell me what’s up?”

Sterling lifted her head but didn’t meet Lacey’s eyes. “I just got off the phone with my husband. Ben said the word from the higher-ups is keep the overtime down.”

“I see. Well, that will give you more time together. He’s been working an awful lot of hours lately. Homicide work can be very taxing. It’ll be good for him to have more time with you and the family.”

Sterling sighed, shifting back into her seat, before turning a sad face to her. “Always looking on the bright side, aren’t you, sis. Well, there’s more. The city is negotiating with the police union, but so far it looks like the cost of health insurance is going to go way up.”

“Oh, more out-of-pocket expenses.” Lacey knew that Sterling and Ben wouldn’t scrimp on health care for one-year-old Joshua—the namesake of Sterling and Lacey’s father—but with the agency’s dwindling income, the couple had alrea

dy tightened their belt. “A few more macaroni-and-cheese dinners?” she offered halfheartedly.

Then Sterling delivered the final blow. “Lacey, this building’s being sold and the new owners are announcing a raise in the rent.” She grabbed the rental agreement papers from her desk and shook them in the air. “It’s the curse, all over again.”

Lacey knew exactly what her sister was talking about. It was something they jokingly attributed life’s challenges to—the Aegar Curse. It had been haunting them since their father’s death when they were young girls. In moments of lightheartedness or when no other explanations made sense of things, they joked that the curse was handed down from their mother’s side. A great-great-great-grandfather spit on somebody’s grave and— voila! The Aegar curse was born and now signified the sisters’ only inheritance from their maternal side.

She knew that neither one seriously believed in a family curse. Their father had been a cop and it was a criminal who took his life. When their mother had become clinically depressed, it was the loss of her husband that was to blame, not a curse. And when Lacey’s husband was killed by the same crime family that stole their father’s life, it was a perverted mind that pulled the trigger. Still, in the deepest parts of her heart, sad questions remained, stabbing her like hot steel and wondering, why?

“I don’t know what to do, sis.” Sterling shook her head and slumped into the couch that stood against the far wall of the office. “I love what we do. I love this office. I love this couch, the file cabinet. But we’ve lost too many clients to Carter, Inc. He’s like a vacuum sweeper, sucking up all the work. He’s the shiny new thing in town so he’s attractive, but it’s not fair. We’ve worked hard for what we’ve built and we are good at what we do.”

“Hello?” Lacey’s heart leapt into her throat as speak-of-the-devil Jackson Carter poked his head through their office door.

“Can I help you?” Sterling stood and walked toward the man.

“I didn’t see anyone at the front desk and I heard someone was looking for a vacuum sweeper.” Jackson’s eyes sparkled mischievously.

Lacey blinked hard. Words stuck in her mouth. This ubiquitous devil was starting to make a habit of taking her off guard. Deliberately, she turned to her sister. “Sterling, this is Jackson Carter. Mr. Carter, this is my sister and partner, Sterling.”

“Aka, vacuum sweeper.” Jackson stepped forward, his eyes a little too merry, and offered his hand.

As Sterling, looking more than a little awkward, stuck out her hand to the wise guy and acknowledged the introduction, Lacey heard the outer door open and close. Why didn’t I hear that a minute ago? A little warning would have been nice? Where are those keen PI skills when I need them?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Bio: Lynn Crandall lives in the Midwest and writes in the company of her two cats. She has been a reader and a writer all her life. Her background is in journalism, but whether writing a magazine or newspaper story or creating a romance, she loves the power stories hold to transport, inspire, and uplift. In her romances, she focuses on vulnerable, embraceable characters who don't back down. She hopes that readers discover, over and over, stories of ordinary people who face ordinary life challenges and are transformed by extraordinary love.

Links:
https://www.amazon.com/author/lynncrandall
www.lynn-crandall.com
@lcrandall246

What If the Problem is in Our Pages?

REVIEW ANGST – PART II  or  What if the Problem is Not in the Stars but Within Our Pages?

                                                                          by Robert W. Walker

Now if the review has any legitimate gripes, in Legacy publishing it is near impossible to get a correction even on a second printing, but if you have put the book out yourself as an Independent author on Kindle or elsewhere, I would take the book down and address these issues. Issues such as misuse of their for there all over the place, or your for you're all over the place, or passive constructions, all tell no show, etc. At which time, you need to hire a guy like me who can repair all the damage at 3 bucks a page.

Pattern errors exist in every author's repertoire, especially new authors. Example for some subconscious reason all your characters' names are Charlie, Tommie, Billie, Sadie....every character's name ends in ie rhyme. This is not what a writing coach/professor like yours truly is talking about when I speak of Sound and Sense. You fail if your characters are all named Tom, Dick, and Harry if all the others are Rham, Rick, and Larry, or let us say Pam, Tam, Jam, Ram, Damn, Lamb, Crain, Blain, bada-bing, but as the author, you never see such flagrantly bad problems as twenty five uses of the word WAS on page one. Or there is a huge overuse of prepositional phrases, or worse yet pronoun proliferation, etc., etc. Many ways to sink a book before she is even launched. Bottom line is to get as many alpha and beta readers as you can find, rewrite as often as you can, and realize that Writing is Rewriting.

Brief bio for Robert W. Walker:

 

Award-winning author, ROBERT W. WALKER has been a citizen of Charleston, West Virginia five years and lives with his wife and four stepchildren in the Capitol City. Rob created his highly acclaimed INSTINCT and EDGE SERIES between 1982 and 2005.  He has since written his award-winning historical series featuring Inspector Alastair Ransom with CITY FOR RANSOM (2006), SHADOWS IN THE WHITE CITY (2007), and CITY OF THE ABSENT (2008).  This history-mystery hybrid straddles the Chicago World’s Fair circa 1893, and has had enthusiastic reviews from Chicago historians and the Chicago Tribune,  which likened “the witticism to Mark Twain, the social consciousness to Dickens, and the ghoulish atmosphere to Poe!”   Rob’s current work is Dead On and a 3-part historical thriller ebook entitled Children of Salem. Rob is also working on PlagueShip Titanic, a re-structuring of the Titanic story which attempts to explain why the captain intentionally sent the ship to the bottom of the North Atlantic. You can find Rob at www.RobertWalkerbooks.com ,  www.HarperCollins.com www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com , and http://tinyurl.com/ykch9vf

Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com

Review: Death Pans Out

Death Pans Out


by Ashna Graves

Hardcover, 288 pages,

from Poisoned Pen Press



Reporter Jeneva Leopold, faced with a life-altering decision, takes a leave of absence from her job to recover from surgery. Breast cancer has claimed part of her body and she wants time to recover in relative peace. Not just from the debilitating effects of the surgery itself, but she wants to be in a place where she can think about her life and her existence. This is a novel about an unusual woman with an unusual plan to rehabilitate herself.



There are great stories surrounding the searches for precious metals from California, South America and the Yukon, as well as the production of gold from less well-known regions, and this one takes its cue from those stories. Fact or fiction, we are never quite sure, but here is a story which may well become a part of that so interesting body of literature.



Jeneva’s family has long owned an idle gold mine in the mountains of Southern Oregon, a harsh, vastly rural region of high deserts, mountains, isolated communities, wild animals and, legends. One legend surrounds the mysterious disappearance of Jeneva’s uncle, Mathew. Mathew disappeared one night from the cabin at the mine almost twenty years before the story opens, and his mining partner has retreated into a silent years from which he may never emerge.



Jeneva takes a long leave of absence and moved to the cabin at the mine where she intends to spend several months of the summer physically and mentally recovering from her trauma. Almost immediately, a parade of compelling characters begins to invade her peaceful existence, from a weird self-styled “artifact hunter,” who insists that he always camps on Bureau of Forestry land and visits the area regularly, to a hearty sheriff who seems at times too good to be true, to a taciturn former model and beauty queen turned rancher, to assorted miners, a tall funeral director and other assorted characters. They all make for some fascinating scenes and while the action is never of a high order, the rising tension and sense of danger to Jeneva and her friends, is well-handled.



I enjoyed the story, learned some things about governmental land management and local attitudes toward government, and found the ending quite a surprise. If there are small problems with this debut novel, they stem from an experienced reporter acting entirely too trusting and naive to serve the story, and a couple of the rants are a little too long. That said, I look forward to another adventure with Jeneva Leopold.



Carl Brookins

www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com

Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,

Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!

Book Review Tuesday - House of Dark Shadows

House of Dark Shadows
Robert Liparulo

I’m not one to read YA. If I do, it would be romance.
But I like horror and House of Dark Shadows by Robert Liparulo seemed pretty close to horror.
I haven’t been scared reading a book since I read It by Stephen King. I was truly scared reading the book.
The King family moves from Los Angeles to a small town. Xander, 15, does not want to move. He has a girlfriend and friends who he makes movies with. He likes his life in LA.
But move they do and the Kings find this odd house. Xander doesn’t like it from the beginning. He hears strange noises and sound travels in odd directions. When he confronts his father, the man agrees there is something about the house, but at first isn’t willing to consider moving.
Xander’s mother finds a set of large footprints in the house. Then Xander and his younger brother, David, see a strange figure on the second floor and decide to follow it. They find odd rooms in the attic. Each one has a different theme and an outside door. In order to go through the door the person must be wearing some of the items in the room.
After Xander is almost killed in a gladiator fight, their father makes David and Xander agree not to enter the rooms and not to tell their mother.
But David can’t resist.
This sets off a series of events which lead quickly to the end of the book.
House of Dark Shadows is the first in a series.
I could not put the book down. When I did finish it, I couldn’t sleep because my heart was pounding. Part of why it was scary to me is that I so identified with Xander and David. Having two boys myself, I found the relationship between them realistic. David especially had the push and pull that a 12 year old faces between being a child and being a teenager.
If you like horror then I highly recommend House of Dark Shadows.

Book Review Tuesday - Triple Exposure

This wasn't the book I planned on reviewing today. I forgot the other one would come via media mail.

Oops.

I just finished Triple Exposure by Colleen Thompson. This was a freebie I received at a conference, but I have to say I wouldn't have minded if I'd paid for it. And in doing research, I found out she has more books out.

I'm not loyal to too many authors. I find because of the pressure to crank them out, the quality can be questionable.

Triple Exposure follows the story of photographer Rachel Copeland after she returns home to Texas. She's be acquitted of murdering a young stalker. Part of the action is a loner named Zeke Pike. No one knows where he came from or where he's been. We later find out he has a past also.

Rachel comes home other father, a pilot who runs a glider operation, and her stepmother who runs a diner. This town is where Rachel grew up so there is the usual baggage that accompanies going home.

Soon strange accidents begin to happen and lest I give away too much of the story I won't go any further.

Suffice it to say that there were enought twists and turns that I was very surprised by the ending. That's hard to do since I write romantic suspense.

When I am through my current TBR pile I will definitely look for another Colleen Thompson book.